At CPAC last week, the Teabaggers of 2010 looked quaint compared to the insurrectionists and radicals of 2024.  The Crazy Wing and the Stupid Wing of the GOP have merged and the resulting zombie was on full display at what can only be dubbed Trumpfest.  One notable moment was during a panel moderated by Chief Shitbag Steve Bannon when QAnon enthusiast and Pizzagate influencer Jack Posobiec said,

“Welcome to the end of democracy. We are here to overthrow it completely.  We didn’t get all the way there on January 6, but we will endeavor to get rid of it and replace it with this, right here.”

It didn’t stop there.  The speakers’ list was a rogue’s gallery of election deniers, white supremacists, criminals and crazies.  TFG co-conspirator Jeffrey Clark was a speaker, along Stefanik, Russian Agent Jim Jordon, Gaetz, Princess Nepotism Lara Trump, and other ne’er-do-wells spouting bullshit and pledging fealty to TFG.  Nazis mingled openly amongst the mouthbreathers, all convinced that Joe Biden is a criminal and the actual criminal, TFG, was unjustly being persecuted.

This is just a preview of the 2024 election year. I’m not looking forward to it in the slightest.

Yesterday’s joy ride around Walter Reed yesterday was SO bad and SO stupid, that even Don Jr. said how his father is acting is crazy.  He said the incessant tweeting and crazy talk is really concerning, but Ivanka and Jarad think everything is dandy, and Jr. apparently doesn’t have the stones to act on his own.  The House of Trump is crumbling, and soon there will be stories of Trump running around the WH in a night shirt screaming about the large spiders chasing him.  But Tucker Carlson says we’re being mean to his Dear Leader.

Do you think Ted Cruz sounds like a delusional lunatic?  Do you, like me, sit slack jawed while listening to the nonsensical tirades of Screwy Louie Gohmert?  Well, I’ve got a piece that will help you understand how we got here.

This is actually from last year, but I re-read this piece from the Washington Monthly and thought it would be a good reminder of how ultra-conservative ideologues went crazy, destroying politics in the US as we knew it.  Most interesting? They did it by adopting tactics used by the Communists in the 30s, 40s, and 50s.  The result is that they have now vilified you, me, and everyone else with whom they disagree, using ever more desperate tactics as demographics and common decency move more and more against them.

I grew up in the age of the nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union.  I was in the 4th grade during the Cuban missile crisis.  I participated in the “duck and cover” drills that did nothing to protect us and scared the crap out of all of us.  During all those years, the guy sitting in the Oval Office was cautious; calculating; surrounded by foreign relations and defense experts.  As a young boy, I feared the Russians and depended on Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, and HW Bush to protect us.  In the years since the Soviet Union collapsed and the arms race waned, I didn’t think too much about nuclear weapons or war, nor did most Americans.

Then came Trump.  The Reality Show President loves to stir the pot to stay at the top of the news cycle.  He insults television stars, politicians, foreign leaders, and everyone who gets in the way.  He spends hours a day watching Fox Noise, then tweeting out advertisements for the network on an hourly basis. And he brags.  He brags on himself in a continuous stream, takes credit for everything from the stock market to airline safety and loves to saber rattle.  He’s now in a twitter war with Kim Jong Un arguing over nuclear button size.

Jesus.  As my spouse said just this morning, “I used to worry about nuclear weapons launched by other countries.  I now worry about my own.”  No truer words were ever spoken.  We are now being threatened with nuclear war by our own goddam president.  He thinks this is a reality television episode, where he wins by vanquishing his foes.  This lunatic has shaken the American psyche, and certainly the world, to the core.

Joe Biden said in October that, “Violating the norms of personal conduct generates more anxiety and fear than any policy prescription that this president has enunciated.  Sending his Secretary of State to talk with North Korea and saying he’s on a fool’s errand… it is absolutely bizarre. It’s bizarre conduct.”  And this is the problem;  the job of the President of the United States is to give comfort to its citizens.  It’s to calm fears; instill confidence in the electorate in times of trouble.  The problem with THIS president, though, is that he couldn’t care less about you, me, or anyone else for that matter.  Trump uses the office of president as a giant funnel to fill his needy ego and his wallet.  If that means stirring up long-dormant fears of nuclear wars, so be it.  If it involves childish name calling and bullying, no problem.

We are on a path of certain long term damage to our democracy, if not worse.  The glib references to nuclear war keep the entire globe on edge.  This behavior hurts everyone, including Trump.  It’s time for Congress or the Cabinet to stand on their hind legs and get this guy out of there before he burns down the planet.

Hold the presses!  Remember that story about Trump’s private intelligence operation?  The ones about his support of pedophile Roy Moore? Trump’s travel ban?  The tax bill that will plunge the economy into recession?  How about nuclear war with North Korea?  None of those are current, so let’s move on to the next big crisis…

TRUMP JUST ANNOUNCED, IN THE FACE OF WORLDWIDE OPPOSITION, TO NAME JERUSALEM AS CAPITAL OF ISRAEL.  He also announced his intention to move the US embassy, touching off a Middle East crisis.

So, upending the US government isn’t enough; threatening nuclear war with North Korea wasn’t enough; NOW, we’re going to start a Middle East war because…it’s Tuesday.

The parallels between Trump and Nixon’s administration are getting downright creepy.  We all knew that Nixon was a crook.  We know that Trump is a crook.  We remember the Watergate break-ins, using the FBI to spy on political enemies, and the Plumbers, Nixon’s private espionage and revenge squad.

Welp, Nixon’s ghost has risen from it’s Watergate grave and is now stalking the halls of the West Wing.  Erik Prince, criminal and founder of discredited and disbanded Blackwater, a mercenary company that infamously killed over a dozen Iraqis in a shooting spree and got away with it, is back.  His sister?  Unbelievably, she’s Betsy DeVos, religious nut and anti-education zealot who is now…wait for it…Secretary of Education under Trump.  Prince is now “advising” White House staff, and has apparently proposed a private intelligence operation, loyal to no one but Trump, to operate OUTSIDE of US intelligence agencies to counter the delusional “Deep State” operation.  You know the Deep State theory, right?  That’s the one where Obama and a bunch of latte-sipping panty waists are actually running a shadow government out of Chicago to take down Trump.  Or some similar nonsense.

Apparently, Mike Pompeo, who Trump is planning to tap for Secretary of State as soon as he can snuff out Tillerson, has endorsed the plan, repeating the same BS that his own CIA operatives cannot be trusted.  It’s insane, and saturated with Nixonian paranoia and fabricated conspiracies.

Trump has gone completely off the rails.  He has no judgement, eats and thinks like a 12 year old high on airplane glue, careening around the White House from one end to the other, embracing every screwball theory and tweeting ridiculous BS in an almost continuous stream.  This is like Celebrity Apprentice merged with the Madness of King George, and House of Cards.

Our situation has gone from unbelievable to mildly entertaining to appalling to full on, sirens blaring, lights flashing red alert.  We all predicted this would be a disastrous presidency; but the rapidity in which it’s happening is simply breathtaking.